University Knowledge Production and Innovation: Getting a Grip

Today universities are increasingly seen as motors of innovation: they not only need to provide trained manpower and publications to society, but also new products, new processes and new services that create firms, jobs, and economic growth. This function of universities is controversial, and a huge and still expanding literature has tried to understand it. The approach of this paper is integrative; it uses the existing literature to answer a number of straightforward questions about the creation of innovations with university knowledge production: how does this happen, to what extent, and if it is desirable. In this way this article grounds the issue. Creating innovation with university knowledge production is relevant, justified and important but this has not been, is not and will not become the core function of universities. The existing literature, in other words, overestimates the importance of university knowledge production - in general, and for innovation in particular.     

Regimes of Knowledge Production in Society: Towards a More Political and Social Reading

The `co-productions' of science and society have undergone dramatic changes in recent decades. However, contrasts between `Mode 1' and `Mode 2' are not compelling inhistorical terms. This essay will argue that, in fact, they offer too naturalistic and a-political a picture.     

Situated Knowledge Production,International Impact: Changing Publishing Practices in a German Engineering Department

In this paper, I analyze how recent calls to internationalize publication behavior affect research practices at an automotive engineering department in Germany. Automotive engineering is a field with traditionally rather scarce publication activity and strong connections to industry. Substantial authority to define suitable research problems and ways of organizing knowledge production on a daily basis was therefore reserved for local academic elites as well as corporate partners. However, as engineers are increasingly expected to prove their performance through publishing in international peer-reviewed journals, the judgment as to what should be considered “interesting” or “robust” research is partly relegated to a gradually globalizing community of academic peers. This generates a variety of tensions with established ways of coordinating epistemic work at the department studied here. For example, the thematic interests of journals tend to exert a disruptive centrifugal pull in the context of an otherwise highly modular research culture, and possibilities to publish in international venues are unequally distributed across individual research projects. But while department members agree that there is a lack of fit between current practices and new expectations towards their publishing behavior, their opinions about the conclusions that should be drawn differ significantly. Some researchers argue that profound organizational changes are necessary to foster the academic rigor of German engineering research. Others believe that evaluation criteria should simply be adapted. This situation is arguably characteristic for research areas with a traditionally strong orientation to local stakeholders, and it suggests a need for more deliberative, participatory approaches to research evaluation in such fields.     

新时代宜居城市思考

宜居城市是中国城市发展的目标要求,具有科学评价标准.建设宜居城市应当坚持4个原则:一是坚持人民性,体现宜居性;二是承继传统型,体现时代性;三是坚持多样性,体现特色性;四是认识阶段性,体现可持续性.建设宜居城市需在7个方面体现新理念:第一,在指导思想上担伟大复兴使命;第二,在绿水青山上作美丽环境文章;第三,在绿色发展上促...     

逝川之叹--古代哲人和诗人对时间的思考

(一 )在先秦哲学家中 ,墨子和庄子都正面提出了时间的概念 ,虽然他们并没有用“时间”这个词。墨子所谓“久” ,就是时间的意思。《墨子·经上》 :“久 ,弥异时也。宇 ,弥异所也。”《墨子·经说上》 :“久 ,合古今旦莫。宇 ,冢东西南北。”“久”与“宇”相对而言 ,前者显然指     

试论社会、族群与文化

社会一词 ,原不见于中文。日本学者将中国传统的“会”结“社” ,合为一词 ,表达英文ｓｏｃｉｅｔｙ及德文 ｇｅｓｅｌｌｓｃｈａｆｔ的定义。中文由日文借回“社会” ,至今约定俗成 ,已将英文中的“集会”(ａｓｓｏｃｉａｔｉｏｎ)的意义隐去 ,只剩了相当于日文“共同体”的意义。而且 ,此词指涉的人群 ,大致有共同的传统 ,包括信仰、价值观等理念部分 ,艺术、音乐等感性部分 ,及饮食起居等实质的生活部分。于是大致言之 ,社会与文化 ,实为一体的表里两面。然而 ,本文后面仍将讨论 ,二者涵盖的范围边界 ,又并不完全相同。“社会”是一个共…     

University and Business Relations: Connecting the Knowledge Economy

It is commonplace to say that the modern economy is knowledge based but a moment’s reflection points to the vacuity of this notion. For all economies are knowledge based and could not be otherwise. The question is rather how is one kind of knowledge based economy to be distinguished from another? This essay proposes that the answer may lie in three directions: (1) in terms of the variety of knowledge that is engaged; (2) in terms of the processes by which the production of knowledge is organised, and its corollary the resources devoted to knowledge production and dissemination; and, (3) in terms of the purposes to which knowledge is put. In respect of each of these dimensions, the rise of the modern university as a custodian of knowledge in Western economy and society has been of central importance; but universities are not alone in this role, a wide range of other agencies, private firms, public research laboratories for instance play an important role in defining a knowledge economy and have done so increasingly since the turn of the nineteenth century—a first indication of the systemic dimensions of a modern knowledge economy.     

Performativity and grassroots politics: on the practice of reshuffling mafia power

Recent uses of performativity have been engaged with bridging the gap between the economy and politics. The concept of performation has for instance been used to enable discursive and material assemblages that challenge this dichotomy, with the general aim of transforming the economy. While the overall intent of this article is to contribute to this bridging, its direction of travel is the opposite: to bring the economy into politics. Specifically, it situates the notion of performativity within studies on grassroots politics in a material sense. First, it discusses some of the leading scholarship on grassroots movements, focusing on their take on the economy. It moves on to suggest that some of the problems that are identified can be addressed using performativity theory, the benefits of which are discussed in the second part. Finally, it empirically illustrates the theoretical discussion by analysing the performativity of the discourses, things and people that are jointly fighting the Mafia today. The article places social movement studies in dialogue with scholarship which is preoccupied with the economic-political cleft, in order to encourage thinking of the economy as a space for political possibility and social struggle, rather than seeing it as a place of capitalocentrism, structural exploitation and inescapability.     

The universities between their internal and external enemies: Thoughts on Professor Conrad Russell's Academic Freedom

Discussion

The universities between their internal and external enemies: Thoughts on Professor Conrad Russell's Academic Freedom     

Stretching and Challenging the Boundaries of Law: Varieties of Knowledge in Biotechnologies Regulation

The paper addresses the question of adaptation of existing regulatory frameworks in the face of innovation in biotechnologies, and specifically the roles played in this by various expert knowledge practices. We identify two overlapping ideal types of adaptation: first, the stretching and maintenance of a pre-existing legal framework, and second, a breaking of existing classifications and establishment of a novel regime. We approach this issue by focusing on varieties of regulatory knowledge which, contributing to and parting of political legitimacy, in principle enable the making of legally binding decisions about risks and benefits of technologies. We base the discussion around two case studies, one of animal biotechnology ethical regulation, the other of ‘advanced therapy’ medicinal product regulation, both in the context of European Union frameworks. Specifically, we explore the knowledge configurations constituting expert committees and other institutional formations of expert regulatory knowledge in their political context. We show that where sectoral and moral boundaries are challenged, different modes of regulatory knowledge beyond scientific forms – legal, procedural, moral, economic and industrial – can shape regulatory innovations either by maintenance of regimes through commensuration and stretching, or through differentiation and separation creating new frameworks. We conclude that establishing an essential techno-scientific difference between pre-existing and novel technologies does not in itself require new regulatory structures, and that the regulatory strategy that is followed will be determined by a combination of different forms of knowledge.     

明代古学思维与诗学逻辑

明代学术虽以理学为宗,然官方提倡的理学之外,尚有科举以外的古学传承,制义、八股之外的经史学问,同样是广义范畴的儒者之学.虽非主流,却于三百年间的明史历程中不绝如缕.杨慎、陈耀文、胡应麟、焦藏、方以智等读书博古,崇尚考据,经史训练中的古学思维渗透、体现于其诗学逻辑中,并由之造就了明代诗坛中一道别样的风景线.